Privacy Policy

The Property Council of Australia Limited is committed to protecting your privacy and handling personal information in an open and transparent way. This policy sets out how we collect, use, disclose and otherwise handle personal information. We recognise that any personal information we collect about you will only be used for the purpose we have collected it or as allowed under the law. We comply with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles set out in that Act and any other relevant law.

Individuals based in the European Union have certain rights in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations. See clause 9 below for further information on how the Property Council complies with these regulations.

The Property Council’s Privacy Policy is divided into the following sections:

How does the Property Council collect personal information?

What personal information does the Property Council collect?

How is personal information used?

Will personal information be given to anyone else?

Access and correction

Is personal information held safely?

Business contact personal information

Online privacy issues

European Union General Data Protection Regulations

Contacting the Property Council

Changes to this privacy policy

1. How does the Property Council collect personal information?

The Property Council is the nation’s leading advocate for the property sector. As a not-for-profit industry body we represent the interests of our members across all spheres of property investment activity, property development, management, professional advisors and trade providers.

The services Property Council offer include:

Networking (seminars, conferences and forums);

Education (for example, through our training courses, and diplomas);

Research and technical support (through our publications and website), and

Advocacy (promoting good public policy through political influence and enhancing the industry image).

For the purposes of our Privacy Policy, these are referred to as “our services”.

The Property Council collects personal information in a number of different ways. The Property Council collects personal information from its new and existing members through application forms and subscription renewal forms. Personal information from non-members who register for our seminars, courses and conferences, is collected through registration or enrolment forms. The Property Council also collects personal information from online forms on our website at http://www.propertycouncil.com.au. This Privacy Policy focuses on how we handle the personal information about our members and individuals who attend or may be interested in attending our seminars, courses and conferences. The Property Council also may handle information about people who do not fall within these categories – these people are our “business contacts” (e.g. our suppliers). How we handle the personal information of our business contacts is discussed at 7 below.

2. What personal information does the Property Council collect?

When you join the Property Council, or when you renew your membership, we will ask you to provide your business contact details (including details of your position and work contact details) and to also advise the same for your employees, if any, who will also be included under your membership.

We may also ask for some of this information when you register for one of our conferences or seminars. If you enrol in one of our education courses, we may also collect additional personal information about your educational and professional qualifications. This may be collected by use of paper forms or online.

As explained at 3 below, the reason we collect this information is so that we can provide you with our services, manage our relationship with you, communicate with you effectively and identify which of our services will best meet your requirements.

However, we don’t collect information we don’t need. For example, we don’t collect sensitive information because we don’t need it in order to provide you with our services.

3. How is personal information used?

The personal information collected from you by the Property Council is used to:

Provide you with our services. This will include use of personal information for establishing and maintaining your membership record (if relevant), or to enrol you in one of our courses, seminars or conferences;

Notify you about services and promotions offered by us or our sponsors (whether you are one of our members, or someone who attends our courses, seminars or conferences, or someone else we have identified as possibly interested in our services).

As a not-for-profit body, the Property Council needs to enter into sponsorship arrangements with third parties from time to time. The Property Council’s main objective in doing so is to keep membership fees at a low level. This will sometimes mean that the Property Council uses personal information about you to provide you with information about products, services and promotions offered by our sponsors.

If at any time you do not wish to be notified about the products, services or promotions offered by our sponsors, please let us know. The Property Council’s contact details are at 10 below.

4. Will personal information be given to anyone else?

In the circumstances described below, personal information may be disclosed outside the Property Council.

(a) Third parties

Personal information collected by the Property Council may be disclosed to third parties to whom the Property Council contracts out specialised functions (including mailing houses, printing companies,conference organisers and sponsors).

If the Property Council does disclose personal information to a third party, the Property Council takes steps to ensure that those parties:

• comply with the Privacy Act when they handle your personal information
• will not transfer, store or process your personal information outside of Australia; and
• are authorised only to use personal information in order to provide the services or to perform the functions required by the Property Council.

(b) Disclosures required by law

The only other time Property Council would make disclosures of personal information is if it is required to do so by law, or if the disclosure is permitted under the Privacy Act.

The Property Council does not sell, rent or trade personal information to or with third parties.

5. Access and correction

Under the Privacy Act, you have a right to seek access to information which the Property Council holds about you. You also have the right to ask us to correct information about you which is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.
If you wish to exercise your right under the Privacy Act to seek access to the personal information that the Property Council holds about you, we ask that you contact the Property Council (see details at 10 below), who will explain how the Property Council will handle your access request.

For legal and administrative reasons, the Property Council may also store records containing personal information in its archives. In some circumstances, you may seek access to the records held by the Property Council which are not current records, but if you do so, we may charge you for the cost of providing access.

6. Is personal information stored safely?

The Property Council takes steps to ensure the security of personal information held by it from such risks as loss or unauthorised access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure. The Property Council only permits your details to be accessed by authorised personnel, and it is a condition of employment that Property Council employees maintain the confidentiality of personal information.

In the event that a data breach affecting your personal information occurs, the Property Council will respond immediately, and if it is deemed to be serious or could cause harm to an individual, we will notify the relevant authorities and the individuals impacted.

7. Non-customer information

Sometimes, the Property Council needs to collect personal information about individuals who are not members, or who are not people to whom we would generally offer our professional services. This will usually arise where we collect the name and business contact details of a person who attends a Property Council event. The Property Council’s policy is to only use personal information collected from non-members for the business purpose for which it was collected.

8. Online privacy issues

The Property Council will apply this policy to all personal information it handles, whether collected online or otherwise. To the extent that this Privacy Policy applies to online privacy issues, it is to be read as forming part of the terms of use for our website. This clause 8 is intended to provide more information about privacy for the users of our website.

(a) Online collection of personal and non-personal information:

As outlined at point 1 of this Privacy Policy, we collect personal information through our website. Our website also collects other information which may or may not be personal information. For each visitor to our website, our server automatically recognises and stores your “address” (e.g. your domain name or internet protocol address), the type of your internet browser, the address of the site which “referred” you to our website and 'clickstream data.

In addition, our website uses cookies to track usage of our web site. Most web browsers are set by default to accept cookies. However, if you do not wish to receive any cookies you may set your browser to either prompt or refuse cookies. Please note that rejecting cookies may mean that not all the functions on the website are available to you. We use cookies for tracking the statistics of our website. This allows us to better understand our users and improve the layout and functionality of our website. This tracking is conducted in such a way to ensure the anonymity of visitors – in this context the cookie may identify your computer – but it should not identify you.

(b) Links to other websites

Sometimes our website contains links to third party websites, for your convenience and information. When you access a non-Property Council website, please understand that the Property Council is not responsible for the privacy practices of that site. We suggest that you review the privacy policies of each site you visit.

9. European Union General Data Protection Regulations

In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) if you are an individual based in the European Union (EU), you have certain rights in relation to personal information that we hold about you.

Notwithstanding any rights you may have under Australian law or our Privacy Policy, under GDPR you have the following rights:

Right to deletion: this means that you can make a request to have your personal information deleted. However, this is not an absolute right and may only apply in certain circumstances.

Right to restrict processing: this means that we can store your personal information but we are limited in the way we can process it e.g. sending promotional emails to you. Again, this is not an absolute right and may only apply in certain circumstances.

Right to data portability: this means that you can make a request for your personal information to be made available to you, or to another organisation on your behalf, in commonly used formats such as excel spreadsheets.

Right to object: you have the right to object to your personal information being processed. This includes direct marketing.

Rights related to automated decision-making: this means that, for decisions that are made about you, using your personal information, you can make a request for those decisions to be by a human rather than an automated system or machine.

10. Contacting the Property Council

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, or if you wish to complain about how we have handled personal information about you, please email us at privacy@propertycouncil.com.au.